By By TED STRONG
Staff Writer
modern farm can be all bucolic tranquility: fields of waving wheat and green corn in the quiet countryside.
But it also can reek or rattle and roar as a tractor starts first thing in the morning. Harvesting can raise dust, and spraying pesticides can cause odors. None of those things is ideal, but they are necessities in the running of the small (or medium or large) business that is the modern farm.
It was partly to keep new neighbors from being blindsided by the effects of farming that the Beaufort County Board of Commissioners in summer 2007 authorized the creation of agricultural districts — chunks of land formally designated as farmland, where farming activity can be expected.
The program has been in full swing for more than a year in Beaufort County, and now Pamlico and Craven counties are considering similar moves.
In fact, Owen Peele, who farms in both Beaufort and Pamlico counties, helped finish a draft Thursday for Pamlico County’s program. Peele is chairman of the Beaufort County program’s advisory board, on the steering committee for the Pamlico County program and has designated his farm as a voluntary agricultural district.
The state began allowing counties to institute the districts in the 1980s, but the idea caught on slowly. It began in the western part of the state, then picked up momentum as it moved east, said Mac D. Daniels. Daniels is a participant in the program and a member of the program’s advisory board.
When the districts were authorized, some people worried the move would cost the county money, but those worries have so far proven unfounded, said Gaylon Ambrose, Beaufort County cooperative extension agent. The program has actually accumulated a very tiny surplus, he said. The fee to join is $50, and 10 farms (with thousands of acres) are already enrolled, with one more pending, Ambrose said.
The fee covers entering the designation into the county’s records. Participants are also given signs indicating that they’re participating in the program. And anyone applying for a building permit within a half mile as the crow flies must acknowledge on paper that they know farmland is nearby.
Ambrose explained that the districts were intentionally designed to have more of an educational than a regulatory role and as a result have minimal “teeth.”
“It’s easy to get in; it’s easy to get out,” Peele said. “All you have to do is write a letter to get out.”
The districts create a legal designation that the landowner intends to use the land for farming for the next 10 years, Ambrose said. To join, land must be eligible for an agricultural exemption from property taxes, Peele said. The owner doesn’t have to be a farmer.
Peele said that anyone buying land within one half mile in any direction of an agricultural district is apprised, before the purchase, of the sorts of activities than can be expected nearby.
As technology improves, farming changes, and even people who were familiar with farm life as children might be surprised by how things work now, Peele said.
“We do more work with less people, and those people are no longer just tractor drivers,” Peele said.
In some other counties, farms have been the subject of nuisance lawsuits. The districts are an added layer of protection against such threats, Peele said. But Daniels emphasized that the districts are just a layer, not iron-clad protection.
“I think a lot of folks are misinformed,” Daniels said. “Being a member of the voluntary agricultural district makes you immune from nothing.”
Peele said the districts also serve to provide recognition of farmland and to educate people about farming’s importance in Beaufort County.
Daniels said farming is vital to the county’s economy.
In 2007, the last year on which he had data, Beaufort County was the No. 1 county in the state for oats, corn and soybeans and the No. 2 county for wheat. That year, cash receipts for county farms totaled more than $105 million, he said.
To enroll in the program, contact the Beaufort County Cooperative Extension. To check if land is eligible, contact the Beaufort County Tax Assessor’s Office at 946-7981.